Fatal Convulsion
by V-San
Summary: Red Garden - Through death's call, Kate has found life once more.


_Fatal Convulsion_

Back when it started, back when she learned she was dead, when she learned that the only way to survive was to fight for her life, Kate often found herself sat in her room, or the nearest closed off space, watching the clock and waiting for midnight to come.

She'd tremble then, in fear for her life, wondering if this next night's hunt would be her last.

Months on and she still hasn't rid herself of the habit of gazing intently at the hands of her wristwatch as they make the slow crawl towards twelve. Now though, she trembles not in fear or anxiety, but in anticipation and excitement.

It's stupid, she knows this, but she finds herself looking forward to the nightly hunts, those fateful brushes with death.

Can she even call it that anymore? After all, here she was, dead but still breathing. They were more like encounters with oblivion. The line between surviving and nothingness, simply ceasing to exist at all.

It's those moments that she finds excite her the most. After countless days of simply hanging on, clinging desperately to this false life, Kate has found that the nearest she can get to living is by skirting that line.

She knows the creatures that she, Rose, Rachel and Claire hunt could rip her body in two in a moment, which before would have terrified her more than she could say. Now though, that very same knowledge sends an electrifying chill down her spine.

At first, she thought it was just a feeling brought on by fighting, adrenaline sending a vivid rush of exhilaration coursing through her veins. It wasn't until one evening, when one of the beasts slipped though her defences, raking its claws down her chest and leaving several gaping wounds across her torso, that she realized where that rush came from.

Feeling the pain explode throughout her body, watching crimson blood arc skywards before splattering across the ground, it was the closest to being alive she'd felt since she died.

She'd barely understood it when it happened and was almost afraid to try, but she grasped onto that faint memory of what she'd felt as she came so near to being wiped from existence. Feeling herself die, it was like being alive once again.

She was almost ready to dismiss what she felt as a fluke, that perhaps it was just the thrill of the fight, when it happened for a second time. That evening she'd been grabbed by the neck, with powerful hands crushing her windpipe and again there was the sensation of _life_ within her.

The sound of her lungs expanding and contracting, her heart beating, blood pumping through her veins in a desperate struggle to supply more oxygen to her brain. It was as if time had slowed down and allowed her body to live for that brief moment.

Now that Kate had tasted life once again, there was no way for her to ignore it. At first she'd tried to, but the memory of what she'd felt those times as she came near to death echoed throughout her. Soon, she found herself rushing headlong into fights, unprepared and unaided, desperate to feel alive once again even as her bones were broken and her blood spilled across paved streets.

Months on from that first encounter and she's still there, fighting for that breath of life within herself.

The others don't understand why she does it; they don't feel the way she does when they draw closer to dying once again. She's asked them several times before. Claire tells her that she feels cold, numb, whenever she's struck down, like she's fading away into nothing.

Since then, she's stopped trying to understand why it only affects her the way it does. Instead she begins to live for death. She knows it's stupid and suicidal, it would be too easy for her to get them all killed in a moment of carelessness, but she doubts she could stop now even if she wanted to.

Though physically she is dead, that feeling of vitality calls to her through the dark days and nights until she once again hungers for death's call.

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_AN. There's not enough Red Garden love on this site. This is what, the third? Fourth RG fic? Well I gave it my best shot to write something good for this amazing series (though it may have come out a bit OOC). Reviews are appreciated, since they let me know there are some fellow fans on here._

_Hope you liked it~_


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